Playground construction
Built by the same crews that grade a forty-acre site.
For schools, parks and communities: design, site preparation, safety surfacing, equipment and the inspection that follows it, all under one contractor.
The same trades, a smaller footprint
A playground draws on the same groundwork we do at municipal scale everywhere else: grading, drainage, a properly prepared base, and turf or surfacing tied into what surrounds it. We build these for independent school districts, parks departments and the communities inside master-planned developments, which puts the work alongside the site drainage, turf establishment and landscape theming we already self-perform on larger jobs.
Where the permit sits
Every project has the required city permit, and we acquire it on our clients' behalf as part of the work, the same as on any other installation we take on.
American Landscape Systems — We pull the required city permit on every project on our clients' behalf. Call (469) 521-2200.
What this service covers
Five parts, one contractor for all of them.
Playground work usually gets split across a designer, a grading crew, a surfacing installer and an equipment vendor. We run all five parts below in house, which is the same reasoning behind self-performing hardscape on our larger commercial jobs.
Custom Playground Design
A play area gets laid out around the site it actually sits on: the age groups it needs to serve, how many children use it at once, sightlines for supervising staff, and how it ties into the paths, shade and seating already on the property. Design happens alongside the same estimator who prices the job, so what gets drawn is what gets built.
Site Preparation and Installation
Grading, drainage and base preparation come first, the same groundwork that underlies every hardscape job we build. Equipment gets set on a properly prepared base rather than dropped onto whatever grade was already there, which is the difference between a play area that drains after a storm and one that ponds.
Safety Surfacing
Rubber mulch, poured-in-place rubber and synthetic turf each fit a different budget, maintenance appetite and look. We specify the surfacing type and depth to the equipment being installed and the site conditions underneath it, rather than defaulting to one product across every job.
Playground Equipment
Structures, climbers, swings and shade get selected and installed to match the design and the age range the space is built for. Because we self-perform the site work and the surfacing alongside the equipment install, one contractor is accountable for how all three pieces meet each other.
Maintenance and Inspection
A play area needs regular eyes on it after handover: surfacing that has shifted or compacted, hardware that has worked loose, drainage that has started to fail. We inspect and maintain what we build rather than handing a facilities director a structure and disappearing after the ribbon cutting.
What sits under the surfacing
The groundwork underneath is the same everywhere we build.
This is one of our commercial plaza installations rather than a play area, and the grading, drainage and base preparation in it are exactly what goes under a playground before any equipment is set. Get that wrong and the surfacing moves, the base ruts, and water stands where children land. It is the half of the job nobody photographs.
Same buildings, same buyer
We also build and irrigate the athletic fields next to the playground.
Schools and parks departments hiring us for a playground are often the same office that owns the practice field, the stadium turf or the common-area irrigation on the rest of the campus. Athletic field installation and athletic field irrigation sit in our landscape and irrigation divisions, and a single facilities director can scope all of it through one estimator instead of three vendors.
Before you call
What facilities directors and parks departments ask first.
- Do you work on athletic fields and playgrounds?
- Yes, both. We install athletic field turf and athletic field irrigation, and we build playgrounds for schools, parks and communities, including site preparation, equipment installation, safety surfacing and ongoing inspection.
- How is the surfacing decided?
- By the equipment going in and the conditions on your site, not a single default product across every job. We walk through rubber mulch, poured-in-place rubber and synthetic turf against your budget and maintenance plans before we design around one of them.